Tuesday, September 2, 2008

Welcome the the neXt PRIZE blog!

We at the X PRIZE Foundation are constantly being asked “What are you working on next” and “Where are the next breakthroughs going to occur?” We can’t always answer these questions with as much specificity as we’d like, but we do like to keep the public informed when we can. So now, we are taking that information sharing to the next level.

This is probably a good time to let you know a little about the X PRIZE Foundation, and what we do. Our mission is to “Create radical breakthroughs for the benefit of humanity.” We do this by offering large incentive prizes for people to find solutions to some of the world’s grand challenges. We currently have three active prizes: the Archon X PRIZE for Genomics, a $10 million prize to sequence 100 human genomes in 10 days, the Google Lunar X PRIZE, a $30 million prize to land a rover on the Moon, and the Progressive Insurance Automotive X PRIZE, a $10 million prize to develop a commercially viable vehicle that gets 100 mpg equivalent. We’re also working on developing more prizes in Education, Energy and the Environment, Exploration, Global Entrepreneurship, and Life Sciences.

The neXt PRIZE blog is designed as a place to let you, the public, know what we’re doing, what’s going on in the world, and why you should even care about these areas. The problems that we’re facing now are global challenges, and the only way we’re going to find solutions to them is to work together, and stay informed!

Initially, we’re going to have two posters to this blog: Pragnya, who is working on ideas for a Village Utility X PRIZE, and Jean, who works in Communications for the Foundation as a whole. Quickly, however, we plan to add a number of new bloggers in all of our different areas, so you’ll be able to follow all of the projects of the X PRIZE Foundation.

If you have any suggestions for how we can make this blog better, please, let us know!